The results had a few surprises for me. While I was expecting a large showing for WordPress (around 37% of the 1000 respondents) I was intruiged by the large number of ProBlogger readers using the free hosted Blogger.com platform (22.2% – or 222 readers). This figure was almost triple the number of Movable Type Bloggers. Another surprise to me was the large numbers of Blog platforms that I’d never heard of before. By the end of the poll there were 49 options. Thirdly I was interested that 2% of those taking part use some sort of ‘custom made’ blog platform (sometimes even hand coded).

Do you agree with his results? It’s interesting to see that the new WordPress.com made the new ranks, even though this new free blogging platform, based upon WordPressMU, the multi-user version of WordPress, is only a few months old. Does his results match your expectations? Is WordPress really gaining rank among all blogging platforms? Interesting.

3 Comments

Lorelle, I have used four different blogging platforms (I hate to admit) and I find wordpress to be incredible. I started with xanga, and then when that got to restricting, I moved to blogger, and then when after a couple years of that I decided to get my own server and a wordpress blog. I couldn’t wait to get it fired up and running, and now I have a hard time not wanting to play with and tweek it all day long. I also use typepad for the classes I am teacher’s assistant for, and we have the premium $15 a month plan and frankly its terrible. There is so little freedom in doing what I’d like to do with that its a waste, the free wordpress.com blogs are much better (in my mind). But for what I pay with siteground, $5 a month I couldn’t be happier with another platform, I even now sport a nicknormal.com wordpress button. So okay, maybe this is more of a confessional than anything but here’s my two sense.

It was inevitable that MT’s successor in the self-hosting arena would be PHP-based because it’s a more widely-available and easier to master language than Perl. As a fork of b2, WordPress had the advantage of a ready-made userbase to build on; and the more users you have to start with, the more potential developers you have to add extra features. It won out over rival fork b2evo because it wasn’t as complicated; if b2evo had implemented multiblogs in a more intuitive way they might well have become more popular than wordpress. Bet they’re kicking themselves.

For all its failings, Blogger will always have a market because the ability to create your own unique template is important to many users, and not everyone has the cash or desire to self-host. Meanwhile, the lack of a Terms of Service or effective system for reporting unacceptable blogs on wordpress.com leads me to believe that we’ll be overrun by splogs and porn sooner rather than later. There’s also the risk that too many users migrating to wordpress.com could cause our servers to topple as Typepad’s did. Popularity is a double-edged sword.